The introduction of portable computing devices (PCD) such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and similar devices has given rise to the development of applications or “apps” that run on these devices. Apps have been written to play audio and video material, provide news and information, facilitate purchases, and control and/or monitor other devices, among other tasks.
On certain devices, only one application may be active in the foreground at a time. Many applications operate in a time-based or interconnected environment where events of interest to users can occur when the application is not in the foreground. Notifications allow these applications to notify their users when these events occur.
The information provided in a notification may be a message, an impending calendar event, or new data on a remote server. Typically, the notification is displayed as an alert message or an application icon. A notification may also include a sound that accompanies the displayed graphic.
A notification may be local or “pushed” from a remote source. A local notification is local to an application. In a typical architecture, push notifications arrive from outside a device. For example, a push notification may originate on a remote server operated by the application provider and sent by a notification service provider. The notification service provider may be the manufacturer of PCD or a third party who provides the service on behalf of that manufacturer. When presented by the operating system, local and push notifications look and sound the same.
Some providers of PCDs have established stores for selling apps that may be downloaded and operated on their respective branded devices. Apple also provides a notification service to its developers.
A user of PCDs from different vendors may only receive the notifications of a particular vendor's device that are offered by that vendor. That is, a user running two versions on a particular app on PCDs supplied by different vendors must configure each device individually to receive a particular notification. If only one version of the app is capable of supplying a notification, then the user will receive the notification on only one device.
Notifications are typically designed to alert a user of an app that an event associated with an app has taken place. The notification allows the user to activate the app and to interact with the app in light of the event.